September 25, 2021 – Titus 1-3

In sharing the gospel with a gentleman from another religion, once, he remarked to me, “Why should I trade my book and my religion for yours? Mine tell me how to live all of life. Your religion is concerned only about Sunday morning.” Of course, he picked this up from the lives of professing Christians he had witnessed, those who “went to church” on Sunday but lived the rest of the week as anything but Christians. Paul’s instruction to Titus gives the lie to this notion. Paul is concerned not only that things in the church are properly ordered, but he also writes about the old and the young, husbands and wives, and servants. Paul even gives instruction about how we are to relate to the government authorities.

Here’s the thing. God would have us “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (2:11-14). Anything but a “Sunday morning only religion!”

So let our lips and lives express

The holy Gospel we profess;

So let our walks and virtues shine,

To prove the doctrine all divine.

Thus shall we best proclaim abroad

The honor of our Savior God;

When the salvation reigns within,

And grace subdues the pow’r of sin. –Isaac Watts (1793)